Speakers

THE 2014 Hemipteran-Plant Interactions Symposium (HPIS) has engaged an outstanding array of international leaders in the field. While our invited speakers form the core of the Symposium, 24 oral presentations will be selected from the abstracts submitted by participants and ample time for poster sessions will be provided.

Margaret (Meg) L. Allen

Research Entomologist
Biological Control of Pests Research Unit
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
Stoneville, Mississippi USA

Meg Allen’s research on Lygus lineolaris is focused on gene expression related to feeding and digestion. She also is examining the invasive kudzu bug, Megacopta cribraria, and its plant/insect/symbiont relationships as it invades the North American continent.

Leader: Interactions Virus Insect Plant (VIP) Group
French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA)
Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD)
Montpellier, France

Stéphane Blanc’s interests are focused on the transmission and evolution of plant viruses. He recently developed a program on the biology of multipartite nanoviruses, where basic mechanisms of plant infection are tightly entangled with dynamics/genetics of the viral population.

Professor
Department of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York USA

Research in the Gray lab focuses on the molecular and cellular interactions of plant viruses with their aphid vectors, the genetics of vector competence in aphid populations, and biological and cultural factors that influence virus epidemics in cereal and potato crops.

Associate Professor
Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York USA

Georg Jander uses genetic and biochemical approaches to study plant-insect interactions. A particular focus of his research is to discover small molecules in Arabidopsis and maize that provide defense against aphids.

Freddy Tjallingii is a leader in the field of plant penetration by aphids and plant-aphid interactions as observed by Electrical Penetration Graph (EPG) recording. EPG technical developments and waveform correlations with stylet tip tissue locations and aphid activities are evidenced from these studies.

Aart van Bel’s research focus is on phloem cell biology – including plasmodesmal connectivity in the cambium during phloem development – also in interaction with a number of phytopathogens such as aphids, nematodes, fungi, and phytoplasmas. Recently, the significance of electrical potential waves and the impact of the associated Ca2+ influx along the phloem has been another point of focus in the lab.